Via Crucis

They first arrived from Oaxaca, Ixtapalapa, Tzintzuntzan, and Mexico City. Some had green cards and visitors’ permits; others didn’t. They lived in barrios and worked in meatpacking houses and steel mills.

Known as mestizos, braceros, wetbacks, and spics, the Mexicans who came to Chicago in the 1920s and ’30s searching for prosperity and independence found prejudice and poverty.

Although never considered...

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